Frontline Blog

For K-12 Human Resources offices, the task of staffing the district for another school year needs to be a two-sided coin, one side focused on getting (recruiting and selection), and the other side focused on keeping (onboarding and retention). Finding the top employees for your district is a complex and time-consuming project, but it is only part of the job. It’s just as important to focus on keeping your district’s top employees engaged and satisfied with their position at the district.

While teachers often teach because they love it, and administrators are frequently former teachers who advanced through the ranks, there’s also the necessity to learn and apply business skills to ensure success from classroom to business operations. It’s hard to conceive of this passion-driven operation as a pragmatic company that thrives when students succeed. However, without passion and pedagogy schools revert to just buildings; without solid practices and processes schools become more likely to fail financially (no matter how much love and creativity is fostered under those roofs).

Teachers have one of the toughest jobs out there – a job that’s incredibly demanding and often thankless. But today, we take a moment to thank all of our teachers, and in particular, a few who made an indelible mark on the lives of Frontline employees.

School districts don’t run a generic recruiting, hiring and onboarding shop like most corporations in the world. Therefore, district HR, Finance & Payroll professionals should have the ability to plan for all of the intricate and unique staffing scenarios that they run into throughout the year. Budgeting can be tricky, often infusing a ton of red-tape in the process that, when overlooked, can bottleneck processes and ultimately negatively impact education.

Beginnings are important. If you start a book with an underwhelming first chapter, or a television show with a subpar first few episodes, you’re less likely to see it through to the end. The same could be said for work — people are more likely to be engaged and stay in a job where they feel prepared and appreciated from Day 1. And in a setting like education, engagement and retention are even more critical because they directly impact students.

Unless you’ve been offline since the days of dial-up and connecting to the internet courtesy of a CD from America Online, you know what it’s like to turn on the news and wonder if your passwords are now in some hacker’s grubby fingers.

There’s a reason that shows like “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” and books like “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” quickly became so popular. While it may have been a while since you were running around on the playground with your classmates, don’t you remember how intensely strategic some of the games were?

It was always cold when I walked to the bus stop, at least in my memory. Down the hill to the corner store, fumbling with a cassette for my Walkman, lugging a far-too-heavy backpack. Every day of the school year, Ms. Nuse was the first school employee I’d see, and at the end of the day, the last one, too. She was no nonsense, but kind. She drove bus 23.

Making sure that your people are being paid the right amount, consistently and on time is among the most critical responsibilities of a school business office. An unintended consequence in many districts, however, is that Finance and Payroll tend to be an island instead of working alongside Human Resources.